Russia subjected to kidnapped Ukrainian children

Thousands of Ukrainian children kidnapped by Russia amid the continuous invasion of the country are being “reeducated” in at least 210 facilities around Russia and Ukraine occupied by Russian, according to a study published on Tuesday by the Humanitarian Research Laboratory of Yale Public Health School.

Researchers say that Ukrainian children in the Eastern regions occupied by Russia since their large -scale invasion began in February 2022 have been sent to the facilities where “in many cases, (they) are placed in forced militarization programs that include, although they are not limited to combat and paratrooper training.”

“Children in some facilities have dedicated themselves to the production of military teams for the Russian Armed Forces, including drones,” said Yale’s study.

The researchers said that their conclusions were based on “publicly available data and satellite images available, and that analysts” evaluated each data source for reliability, veracity and credibility using evaluation criteria derived from the Berkeley protocol “for open source research, and an intelligence evaluation framework used by NICO.

YALE researchers do not provide an estimate of the total number of children kidnapped by Russia. They point out that, although some have been returned, “other groups of children have been retained indefinitely. In some cases, children who have entered this network of camps, the so -called family and other facilities have entered the Russian Program for Development and Adoption coerced, finally they are placed with families in Russia and have become naturalized citizens of the Russian Federation.”

The report details at least eight different types of facilities to which Ukrainian children have been taken, including summer camps, mental health institutions, at least a military base and even a monastery. He said that the objective for Russian authorities is to indoctrinate Ukrainian children with pro-ruse, anti-ucranian cultural and patriotic narratives.

The “Bring Children” of Ukraine, launched by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, says that more than 19,500 Ukrainian children have been kidnapped since Russia’s invasion began. He says that only 1,600 have been returned, including 101 that were bought in August.

In March 2023, the UN International Criminal Court issued An arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin, accusing him of committing “the war crime of the illegal deportation of the population (children) and that of the illegal population transfer (children) of the occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.”

The court also issued an arrest warrant against Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, the child’s rights commissioner in the president’s office, accusing her of committing the same crimes.

Zelenskyy said last week that he would raise the issue of kidnapped Ukrainian children during the UN General Assembly meeting in New York next week. He said he would organize the event together with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, and that “many leaders will join us.”

In August, later Meeting with Zelenskyy and European leaders In Washington, President Trump said in a social media post that he and the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, had discussed “the massive world problem of missing children”, with the aim of “taking them to their families.”

Von der Leyen, in his own position, thanked Trump, adding that “each Ukrainian child kidnapped by Russia must be returned to their families.”

Trump did not mention Russia specifically in his own comments. The first lady Melania Trump, several days before the White House meetings, had written an open letter to Putin supplying the Russian leader to protect “the innocence of these children”, although he did not specify what children he was referring to.

Trump gave that letter to Putin in person when the two men met in Alaska last month, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The state media of Russia did not indicate any Kremlin response to the accusations made in the Yale Laboratory report. The Russian Embassy in Washington, DC, did not immediately respond to a request for comments from News themezone.

Two years ago, in a report published during the Biden Administration that was titled “The Kremlin War against the children of Ukraine”, the State Department said that the arrest orders of the CPI, and said that Russia’s response included “threats of nuclear footprints, false claims about ‘Western experiments’ of ICC, and children’s claims’ to children’s children. security.'”

Putin’s government “seems to be determined to erase the existence of Ukraine as a state when trying to steal from his future,” said the state department report of the Biden era, and added that “it shows increasing evidence Russia uses forced relocation, reeducation and, in some cases, the adoption of children in Ukraine as a key components of their systematic efforts to suppress the identity, history and culture of Ukraine. “

News themezone has asked the State Department if you accept the findings presented by Yale’s laboratory, if the Trump administration has a new plan to address the subject of kidnapped Ukrainian children while continuing to press for a diplomatic resolution to the war in Ukraine, and if the United States will be represented at the meeting organized by Zelenskyy and Carney during the UN General Assembly. The State Department did not immediately respond to the requests for comments from News themezone.

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